31 March 2010

Oh! So That’s Why They Did It!

I guess they needed sex rehab like we have today. We could send them to pal around with Tiger, Jesse James, and David Duchovny! All would be resolved and the numerous lives that were ruined forgotten.

In reality, the scandal implicates left and right alike. The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’s overemphasis on therapy. (Again and again, bishops relied on psychiatrists rather than common sense in deciding how to handle abusive clerics.) But it was the church’s conservative instincts — the insistence on institutional loyalty, obedience and the absolute authority of clerics — that allowed the abuse to spread unpunished.